Forum:Gigapause protect
So as been noted already when the gigapause ends there will likely be a flurry of activity, much of it likely being vandalism (whether it be just common vandalism or people trying to make highly visible spoilers). Of course there will be legit edits but the amount happening will likely cause edit conflicts, badly done-good faith edits, and the major volume of it all will likely cause trouble in trying to vet everything. I mean most of us already all realise this, but might as well state it for those who don't realise this. So clearly we are going to need some sort of protection while everything is being sorted (if Hussie spreads the ending out over a period of time as opposed to the one huge update then depending on how spread out it is the major problem should only be vandals as the smaller parts of the story should be integrated much easier and without issue). So this discussion is to figure out all potential solutions and also figure out which ones are viable and which one(s) we should use. Now the easiest, broadest, most consistent option is protect site. While we don't have access to it ourselves and Wikia seems reluctant too grant that power to Wiki admins, however Wikia staff and VSTF can protect the wiki for us, but the question is whether they will feel it is appropriate to do so, if we explain our reasons and the fact this will be a one off thing they might be willing but it will have to be discussed with them, which of course can easily be done beforehand. One thing of note is that protect site's maximum time limit (at least on Wikia) is 12 hours, if Hussie does a single big update and we only have a single use of the protect site that only gives us 12 hours to sort whatever we can out. If he does break it up I doubt we will be able to have it done for each update, so I think we would have to reserve it for Act 7. Another option is the add something to the filter that basically blocks all edits for any restricted group(s), however people will still be able to make edits, they simply be told their edit was blocked when they try to save, this will simply frustrate and piss off a bunch of people, and clog up our abuse log. Plus it wouldn't surprise me if such a thing was against the terms of use. Another option is simply protecting everything one-by-one, highly undesirable. There is another option however; cascading protection. Cascading protection results in the protection of all other pages included in a page; for example if we activated cascading protection on John's page, his infobox, the character navbox, the HS link template, all the images, on his page, would be protected. Problems? It only works on transcluded things so we would need to create a pre-existing page that transcludes a number of other pages and hope the page isn't so large that it breaks and then we simply cascade protect the special page. More problems? This only works if you do a full protect, not a semi-protect. If we have to resort to cascading protection I think temporarily promoting any mods to admins so they can still edit would have to be done. Well that is everything I can think of at this time. - The Light6 (talk) 02:29, October 22, 2013 (UTC) :Cascading protection makes a mess of everything, though here that might be what y'all will want to do (it's not like the Vast Update isn't going to break the Internet anyways). Still, there is a limit on the number of templates transcludable in a page, and since this is recursive (templates that are transcluded in transcluded pages are counted as separate pages) you'd need more than megapage. :So I support going to Wikia, but I don't know how willing they'd be, or how quickly they'd respond (this is something that would need to be resolved within an hour or two after updates start, preferably sooner). :There is a pywikipedia script for the mass-protection of pages, and if all else fails, one might resort to that. Cat (meow ∙ ) 03:15, October 22, 2013 (UTC) :I don't think vandalism will even be that much of a problem, in all my time here I've noticed that vandalism seems to be most common during times where there are no updates (Which I guess means that most vandals are bored homestuck fans, kinda sad). But good faith edits gone wrong and low quality are probably going to be an issue, as well as edit conflicts. On the other hand I think that it would be a shame to kill the boost in activity we'll get when the mega update happens. I also think that covering everything ourselves might be just as much work as it would be to just clean up after the storm happened...although I am already started to doubt that as soon as I typed it down. :Maybe we could turn the whole thing into an event and make it more managable. The character pages are what most people will want to edit, as well as the class/aspect/role pages maybe. So if we lock all those manually (not too much work), then we could unlock a certain group of characters every 2 days or so. For example when the mega update hit only the kids pages are unlocked, then 2 days afterwards those are locked and the A2 trolls are opened for edits, then 2 days after that all cherubs are editable, then the guardians, etc etc. We just would have to deciede on an order an anounce the order and the whole thing. That way we will bee able to supervise this more easiely and make sure nothing get's vandalised, broken etc. Just an idea, not sure if it's feasible. 09:26, October 22, 2013 (UTC) ::Actually, I quite like that idea. We've previously announced the Megapause Cleanup Drive (which never really got anywhere), and I posted the other day on the Gigapause Reread thread on MSPA forum with a formal request for cleanup from those participating in the reread, but something like this – a well-defined "this is what can be contributed to" – might actually work quite well. ::Does still require protecting quite a lot of pages manually, though. The difficulty with manual protection is that we don't know what pages might suddenly be lifted out of obscurity to be Chekhovically relevant, so we'd kind of have to cover all our bases. I mean it's pretty safe to assume that JB/BQ/PS pages can remain unprotected, but for example, Fraymotif is a page that's not really been up to much for a long time, but I'll be very surprised if it doesn't turn up in the final stretch of the story. I mean here's a list off the top of my head of what articles would be definite or likely targets in need of protection to avoid massive floods of editing, likely causing conflicts at best: ::*Nearly all HS character pages ::*Ongoing Gags ::*Recurring Themes ::*Homestuck: Act 6 Act 6 ::*Homestuck: Act 7 (preemptive page creation protection which tbh we could do right now) ::*List of Flash Pages ::*Sound ::*Mythological Roles ::*Class ::*Aspect ::*Random less obvious articles like Fraymotif, of which I have no idea how many there are ::That is a lot of pages ::EDIT: Also I'm wondering if there's a tool that prevents creation of new pages (other than through ProtectSite), because that is something that I definitely think we'll need if we can get it :::I'm really liking BitterLime's idea. We could probably put these announcements up on the tumblr page, and this is perfect because just yesterday I was debating whether to announce that we were discussing coverage of the giga update here. Whatever we decide to post, I'll make sure the message gets out. EDIT: made an initial post. 17:23, October 22, 2013 (UTC) ::::Reviving this topic. It is now over 7 months since this topic started, and while the gigaupdate still looks to be some way off, we still have not resolved what we will do when it hits. But I guess knowing that we are closer to it ending than before helps put any ideas in perspective. Anyhow a quick recap of ideas. ::::*Site protect - Requires the help of Wikia, perhaps we should actually ask before it happens whether this is an option. That way we will know for certain whether we can do it or not and thus consider the other options without the ifs-and-buts of this being in effect. Also if we do decide to ask Wikia, whether they will help or not may also depend on the exact level of protection we ask for, so we would need to also work this out. I would personally recommend semi-protecting the site alongside a full-protect towards page creation. ::::*Protecting pages individually - Highly dependent on whether Wikia will help us with site protect or not. If we do get the protection I suggested than we can just focus of full-protecting a handful of pages that we deem high-risk as opposed to everything. Even if we did have to protect everything ourselves, do we want to full-protect everything? Or would semi-protecting be enough for most pages? See what I mean about things depending on the status of site protect? ::::*Deputising mods - Temporarily deputising mods into admins so they can edit any fully protected pages and protect pages themselves if necessary, and block any vandals. At the moment we only have like two mods where deputising would do any good; Aepokk Venset and Lp2277. ::::*Using the filter to block all edits - Like I previously expressed, I don't really like this idea. I don't know what Wikia would think about it either, I mean it is temporary but last thing we want is our filter getting 100 hits in one day and having Wikia come around and tell us we are breaking some rule or determine we are abusing the filter or whatever. Even if it is fine, the filter still makes it appear that edits can be done and only stopping them when they are submitted, that will mean that anyone who wants to do a large genuine edit who believes editing is still open could go and write out a great addition only to submit it and have it blocked. It just sounds like an idea that is bound to cause confusion and annoy people. ::::- The Light6 (talk) 07:49, June 4, 2014 (UTC) :::::Another thing to add to considerations is that, of course, we have no idea when it will hit, nor whether Hussie will give a warning. It may be worth attempting to contact him, perhaps via PxS staff, to just ask whether he plans to give a public warning, and if not, whether he might consider letting the wiki staff know a couple of days in advance (obviously on the condition that it be only a couple of us so as not to let word leak out) so that we can make the wiki ready just before the update hits. While applying whatever protections we can as soon as possible will minimise trouble, it would only take the update happening to arrive at a time when none of the staff are on, and we'd have a lot to clean up. :::::As for anything with regards to wikia, I think the best course of action might simply be to contact them, explain precisely the nature of the situation, and ask what response they recommend. Explaining the situation in sufficient detail is, of course, something that would benefit from my above point ::::::Well even if we can't get any advance info, there is always MSPA Prophet who will tell us when the pages are being uploaded, given the size of this particular update and previous experience with the Prophet, we should get a notice of at least an hour, possibly several. But that is still limited by staff being online when that happens, but it does give us more leeway, we just don't know how much. - The Light6 (talk) 21:48, June 4, 2014 (UTC) :::::::I'm guessing we'll probably be fine if we deputized some mods, semi-protected the major pages to prevent anonymous vandalism from slipping in between edits, and full-protecting individual pages on a case by case basis if it becomes necessary. The MediaWiki software handles edit conflicts pretty well. And, while some speed readers will probably rush to be the first ones to put details on the wiki, others will be focusing on liveblogging it on Tumblr, or making reaction videos to YouTube, or drawing fanart, or just speed-reading to the end. Also, it's not a movie or a TV show, not everyone reads at the same rate. Also, unless they rent out a load of extra server capacity, set up some temporary mirrors like they did with Cascade, or post a torrent or something, it's pretty likely that server timeouts are going to slow down a lot of readers and spread them out further. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 00:24, June 5, 2014 (UTC) ---- So today's news update changes the game on this whole thing: #We've got an approximate gigapause end date. #The gigaup8 has been debunked as ever being Hussie's plan. #*But more importantly, the mass update plan has been abandoned in favour of returning to serial updates. So #1 means we could refine the protect dates but #2 means we don't need to enact this protection at all now. So I think we can all agree this issue is resolved and the matter can be put to bed. - The Light6 (talk) 14:42, September 27, 2014 (UTC) :Agreed. 14:46, September 27, 2014 (UTC) ::Agreed and relieved. 01:21, September 28, 2014 (UTC) :::Just realised that the eventually agreed upon plan was never actually posted in this thread but rather only discussed via Skype and the IRC. Whelp. Anyhow the news post came at an opportune time considering the plan was set to go into action in 3-4 days time. Now time to close this topic. - The Light6 (talk) 03:09, September 28, 2014 (UTC)